Sacrifice
by mewling
Summary: [AUish] [Team Sevenish] In the years after the war, sometimes rebuilding your lives is hard when only half the pieces are there. Team Seven makes do with what they can.


series**naruto**  
rated**K**  
warnings**angst**,**OOC**  
part**1**  
by**mewling**

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**Sacrifice **

(1 of 4)

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It is Thursday today.

Iruka has rarely seen the fire go out of Naruto's eyes, or the smile fully leave his lips. He almost never sees it nowadays, when Naruto always smiles with resigned contentment. The Hokage calls it forced maturity.

But that's what wars do to people.

It's been over a year since war was officially declared over, and several months since it actually did. Naruto and Sakura brought Sasuke back, although he's never been the same. No one was.

He visits Team Seven only ever on Thursdays, mostly for the same reason anyone does; guilt.

Team Seven lives in apartment number 207. Iruka knocks, mostly as a formality. He almost always lets himself in.

"Iruka!" says Naruto, waiting in the sitting room. His smile is a little mischievous but a lot more humorous. "Is it Thursday already?"

Changes are irreversible. Iruka smiles. He holds up his plastic bag, heavy with treats. Naruto crows in delight, although he no doubt expected it; Iruka never visits without bringing at least one bag. He puts the bag down on the table. Naruto's head is bobbing up and down, and he's making excited noises, but Iruka suspects he is humouring him.

He doesn't mind. Naruto is only thinking of him, after all.

Naruto looks at him oddly, and Iruka returns the expression before he realises. He opens the bag, and begins to display its contents.

Stupid. You forgot he doesn't have arms, didn't you?

It doesn't pass Naruto by; nowadays, not much does. He doesn't have much better to do than watch, after all. "You forgot, didn't you?" His voice is light-hearted, amused. "I don't mind, you know."

Sakura comes in, dragging (or guiding?) Sasuke behind her. Her smile is warm and tired. "Hallo Iruka. It must be Thursday."

Naruto laughs, loud and guffawing; it's mostly the same as it has ever been. Iruka avoids the sight of Naruto's arms, the stumps jumping up and down morbidly. "Sakura-chan, I said just the same thing!"

Sakura's mouth twitches, but she says, "Don't laugh, Naruto. He looks mortified."

Iruka looks to Sasuke on impulse. It's in the same way a persons gaze is drawn to something they want to avoid seeing. Sasuke is on the top of many people's lists for that. His face is vacant, his empty gaze focussed unseeingly on the wall. He doesn't say anything.

Iruka remembers the day Naruto and Sakura brought him in, looking as hollow and lifeless as he does now. Everyone thought it was shock. After a few months they all realised it wasn't, but only his close friends learnt what is was. Naruto told Iruka, eventually.

"Are you taking Naruto out today?" asks Sakura, snapping Iruka out of his reverie. She's pouring tea; Iruka thinks it is very like Sakura to try to be a good hostess even under these circumstances.

Iruka nods. Naruto says 'Yay!'

Sakura smiles gratefully at him. "Thank-you. We really appreciate you doing this for us."

It's the same thing she says every time.

"Ramen, right?" Naruto is eager, hopeful. It's not like they ever go anywhere else, but Iruka understands, at least a little bit, why he asks. These little acts of childishness ease Iruka's heart.

Sakura helps him move Naruto's wheelchair down into the doorway, and out onto the landing. Iruka doesn't need the assistance, but never says anything. He knows she only does it out of habit. Sometimes he feels that everyone's humouring each other, and these visits are just becoming big plays of denial. It's a thought he quickly represses; selective memory loss has become easy now.

Iruka supposes it's the war, again.

Team Seven's apartment building doesn't have a lift, but it has a ramp. The design is typical of post-war housing; cost effective disability wards. Naruto's chatter bounces off unadorned concrete.

Iruka takes Naruto along the street to Ichiraku, proudly down the middle, the way Naruto likes it. Naruto enjoys the stares. Iruka just enjoys Naruto's happiness.

A kid stops to gape. Naruto just jiggles his beastly stumps and he runs off. Naruto cackles delightedly. "Sakura would never let me do that."

Naruto had spent three months in the hospital, Tsunade working day and night to repair the damage done to his body by the Kyuubi Chakra. She succeeded, more or less. She couldn't save his arms, and the damage done to his spine meant he became a paraplegic, but he came away with his life, which is more than anyone else expected.

Iruka remembers when Naruto first saw Sasuke after recovering, because Iruka wheeled him there. Sakura was waiting there by Sasuke's bed, supporting the boy into a sitting position. At the time, Naruto hadn't yet begun smiling again, and he looked expressionlessly at the shell of Sasuke.

'_I didn't die for this'_ was all Naruto had said. Iruka still doesn't know what that meant.

"I suppose your not eating again," Naruto remarks lightly as they arrive at Ichiraku. This is true, and inevitable. Eating noodles is a difficult thing for a man with no arms to do. Naruto acknowledges this and goes on to say, equally lightly, "Guess that's why Sakura never takes me n'Sasuke out, eh?"

This is a lie, and they both know it. There are few restaurants in town that will take Naruto in — demon-free, armless, paraplegic or otherwise— and none that will take Uchiha Sasuke.

Naruto orders, and the owner of the stall sits to chat with Naruto as he always does, resting a fingerless arm on the shiny new wood of the counter. It isn't the same as it used to be with the two of them at this stall; it may look the same, and Naruto seems as short as he used to be in that wheelchair, but the old man isn't the one who cooks anymore and he bears signs of wear and tear, the new cart suggests the old one was ripped to shreds and Naruto talks as if he's at least as old as the owner.

The food is soon ready. Iruka feeds Naruto the entire time, and although it's not as awkward and clumsy as it was in the beginning, it still fills Iruka with a great admiration for Sakura's patience and kindness. He could not do this several times a day, every day. He could not constantly break his heart like this.

When they leave, it is dark and the streets are empty. They were the last to exit Ichiraku's; Naruto has not lost his appetite, but it does take much longer to feed him now. Iruka pushes Naruto's (now slightly heavier) wheelchair down the blackened road at a leisurely pace. The air is warm with Naruto's voice.

"He'll wake up, I know he will," says Naruto in a confident voice. It's the same voice Iruka was used to hearing proclaim his dream of being Hokage. "Me n'Sakura believe that he'll come back, even if no-one else does. That's all it takes, y'know?"

Naruto is no longer in any condition to be a regular citizen, let alone a ninja, let alone Hokage. Iruka wasn't there to help Naruto through this realisation; that is what he and Team Seven's remnants achieved. Naruto's dreams —Sakura's too, probably— now are vested in Sasuke. Iruka wants to believe, too, but he can't help but think Sasuke's as gone as Naruto's arms, gone as Iruka's—

"Hah!" Naruto snorts mock-contemptuously, "You don't believe me either, so you? Sometimes I wonder if I even do. It seems that over the past few years I've had reality crammed down my throat, and it ain't going anywhere."

Naruto's yellow head passes bellow a street lamp. It doesn't look as spiky as it once did.

"But somewhere in there, is still Sasuke. It's enough for us just to be there alongside him, y'know? When I talk to him, somewhere inside, on some level Sasuke is listening, right?"

Iruka doesn't think Naruto can be called young anymore. He doesn't think any of them —Sakura, Naruto or Sasuke— can be anymore. He knows that things have happened to the three of them that he'll never know, and would never understand anyway.

"Because we're a team, I suppose. We'll stick together in death and this miserable little shit of a life we have left."

For a long time after that, Naruto is quiet. Iruka discovers that even without Naruto's voice, the night is warm.

Sakura opens the door and peers an anxious pink face out even before they come to the door. "Goodness, what a relief. Thank you again for taking Naruto out, Iruka." Still, she doesn't look quite relaxed until she is able to put her hands onto Naruto's shoulders. She begins to steer Naruto towards 207, and gives Iruka a smile that offers tea, a soft seat and homemade snacks.

Iruka shakes his head in an apologetic refusal. He needs to be up early the next day. Sakura smiles in understanding. She doesn't leave the doorway but stays there, half-lit with Naruto as they call and wave goodbyes.

"Phone sometime!" yells Naruto. Iruka smiles, bitterly and impulsively, to himself. He hears the unmistakable sound of Sakura swatting Naruto in the back of the head.

"Idiot," she hisses. Sakura forgets that her angry whispers are as loud as speaking normally. But it is okay. He's sure that the reason Naruto forgets he's a mute is the same reason he sometimes forgets Naruto's amputated stumps.

There are some things in Iruka's past he would do anything to have back –Naruto, for instance- and some things he would do anything to forget. He expects it is a compromise. It is one of the reasons he never stays for more than a few minutes in apartment 207; the blurred line between now and then, between good and bad, between love and hate and obsession. There's a degree of utter devotion and companionship he just can't understand.

It's not like that in 207, there's really any place for him anyway. In that little apartment in a plain post-war construction is a shelter for three team-mates who figure that between them, there's at least one life for them to live out. He barely knows that Sakura and he guesses he never really knew that Sasuke.

And nowadays, he only knows Naruto on Thursdays.

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**TBC** (gasp! I've never written that before!)

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A/N: This is a continuation, although it's really just like one of my regular four part one-shots, only longer; it's still rambling, angsty and plot-less. Anyway, onto the important stuff; the stories I plagiarised so badly I need to recognise them (although that doesn't really make it plagiagarising, just shameless abuse).

Parts from  
_The Spellcoats_ by Diana Wynne Jones **80s british kiddie book  
**_Finale_ by tracy-kins (story-ID: 2387305) **naruto  
**And it basically is a complicated Naruto version of  
_Promise_ by Triste (story-ID: 2808693) **beyblade **(yes,you read that right(blushes))

Of which the later two I would recommend. If you wanna ruin the story that is.  
G'wan, I dare ya.


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